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Stamp out NAS threats

There are numerous threats to NAS data and many different ways to protect it. The trick is to find the right level of protection for the perceived risk. NAS is vulnerable to many of the exploits that plague Windows-based systems: viruses, worms, unauthorized access, data tampering, snooping and IP spoofing. But even though NAS runs on ubiquitous Ethernet and TCP/IP transport protocols, it's fairly easy to protect. The tough part is finding the right level of protection. Any good security framework contains multiple security layers. If one layer is compromised, the target of the attack is still protected by other layers. In the case of NAS, network perimeter security is the outermost shield that keeps unauthorized people out of your LAN and storage network. If an attacker penetrates your perimeter security, authentication and file-access authorization will prevent access to files and folders on the NAS; and unless an attacker can guess an authorized account and its password, your data will still be protected. Prioritization and ...

The primary motivation for building a SAN is often to meet a pressing need for performance, scalability or both. But today's new SAN buyers are looking for more than performance and scalability; they're interested in better ways of protecting their data, using such techniques as snapshots of SAN volumes and sometimes even relying on newer technologies to replace traditional backups.

NAS is open to many of the exploits (viruses, worms, unauthorized access, data tampering, snooping and IP spoofing) that have plagued Windows-based systems. But even though NAS runs on ubiquitous Ethernet and TCP/IP transport protocols, it's fairly easy to protect. The hard part is selecting the right level of protection.

In general, product ratings for the third annual Diogenes Labs-Storage magazine Quality Award for backup and recovery software increased over last year's scores. CommVault's Galaxy, this year's enterprise-class winner, returned to the winner's circle after losing its crown to BakBone NetVault: Backup last year. In the SMB area, EMC's Retrospect also returned to the top spot after a one-year hiatus.

The updated Federal Rules of Civil Procedure set new standards for electronically stored information, and may have a significant bearing on how your company manages its digital documents. Some of the country's top legal experts weigh-in with suggestions on how to create retention policies that can keep your company on the right side of the law.

Email is now firmly established as a critical application, with more than 60% of enterprises using Microsoft Exchange for their corporate email, according to Gartner. This widespread adoption of Microsoft Exchange, and growing electronic discovery requirements, make protecting it a more complicated proposition than just performing simple backups and recoveries.

Tape libraries are finally assuming the role they were designed for: longterm protection and preservation of data. But as disk assumes its new role as the initial target for backups and the source for restores, tape library vendors need to shore up their abilities to interact with disk libraries and provide users with some definitive answers on encryption.

Remote-office data has always been something of a corporate orphan when it came to backup. Once upon a time, "out of sight, out of mind" might have worked, but times have changed. Regulatory compliance, legal liability issues and the cost of producing data for ediscovery make it clear remote data can no longer be ignored.

Virtualizing servers is becoming standard operating procedure in large and small companies. VMware and similar platforms are transforming data center management through server consolidation and business continuity improvements, but they're "breaking" a few things along the way, including data protection strategies.

Spiraling energy costs are taking an increasingly big chunk of the data center budget. Data centers are grappling with rising electrical bills and, in some locations, limitations on the amount of available power are forcing IT anagers to rethink their basic processes.

Server virtualization is the big data center story, and storage managers need to design their storage systems to take advantage of a virtualized server environment. There are steps you can take now to ensure that your storage systems are up to the task.